WikiLeaks Reveals 5 Million Emails from Intelligence Firm

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WikiLeaks has begun publishing more than 5 million emails from
the global consulting firm Stratfor, in a campaign to show what
it believes are the intelligence company's secret and shady
dealings with its high-ranking private and government clients.

WikiLeaks announced the release of the "Global Intelligence
Files" this morning (Feb. 27). In a statement on its
site, WikiLeaks said the emails "show Stratfor's web of
informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and
psychological methods."

The emails date between July 2004 and December 2010, WikiLeaks
said, and show the "inner workings of a company that fronts as an
intelligence publisher but provides intelligence services to
large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed
Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies,
including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines
and the US Defence Intelligence Agency."

Stratfor planned to "subvert" WikiLeaks

Titles of the data dumps include "Coca Cola Contracting Stratfor
to Spy on PETA," "Haaretz Journalist is Stratfor Informant,"
"Russian sources and other secretes of Stratfor" and "Fred
Burton's High Level Informants — Bolivia and Pakistan." (Burton
is Stratfor's vice president for intelligence.)

Included in the stolen "Global Intelligence Files" are emails,
WikiLeaks claims, that outline plans undertaken by both Stratfor
and the U.S. government to attack and subvert WikiLeaks and its
founder, Julian Assange.

WikiLeaks did not say how it obtained the emails, but it's
possible the Anonymous hacking group had a part in it. On Dec.
24,
Stratfor first found its way into the crosshairs of the
hackers when Anonymous stole what it said were thousands of
emails and credit card details from the Austin, Texas-based
geopolitical analysis firm, whose clients also include AIG, Bank
of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Google, the United
Nations and all four branches of the U.S. military.

Listed among WikiLeaks' 25 partners in publishing Stratfor's
internal emails are Rolling Stone and McClatchy Newspapers in the
United States, La Repubblica in Italy, The Hindu in India and the
Sunday Star-Times in New Zealand.

The emails, WikiLeaks said, will shine a spotlight on Stratfor's
corrupt financial schemes, including a plan between former
Goldman Sachs managing director Shea Morenz and Stratfor's CEO,
George Friedman, to start a shady investment fund, StratCap, with
"a complex offshore share structure."

WikiLeaks gave a preview of the leaked Stratfor emails to The Yes
Men, an anti-corporate-greed activist group. The Yes Men told
Reuters the email the group received outlines an
"elaborate hoax Stratfor staged to criticize Dow Chemical
Company's handling of the Bhopal chemical disaster in India."

(Considered one of the world's worst industrial catastrophes, the
Bhopal disaster occurred Dec. 2, 1984, and caused the death of
thousands of people living near the Union Carbide India Limited
pesticide plant in Bhopal, India.)

Stratfor will not be bullied

Stratfor replied to WikiLeaks' action in a
statement released today. The company called the leak,
"a deplorable, unfortunate — and illegal — breach of privacy,"
and said the emails "may be forged or altered to include
inaccuracies; some may be authentic."

"We will not validate either," Stratfor explained. "Nor will we
explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property
stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to
questioning about them."

Stratfor added that, under the leadership of its Friedman, it
will "not be silenced and will continue to publish the
geopolitical analysis our friends and subscribers have come to
rely upon."